Access ports are generally known, and typically serve to provide access to an opening of a building, e.g. to a garage or a barn or a workshop or a warehouse. Where about hundred years ago typically wooden gates were used, which were hingedly mounted by means of hinges for allowing the gate to turn inwardly or outwardly with respect to an upright wall, nowadays typically tilt (up) doors or sectional (overhead) doors are used. Tilt doors are typically tilted as a single entity from a vertical plane (door closed) to a horizontal plane (door open) parallel to the ceiling, but have the disadvantage that they might hit objects (such as e.g. a car) located close to the door, during the tilting operation. This problem is greatly reduced by sectional doors, which generally contain multiple panels of relatively small height, which are pivotally connected to each other, two by two. Such doors can e.g. be opened by rolling up the panels on a shaft or reel, for example in a manner similar to a roller shutter. Such doors may even have doors and windows, which are rolled up along with the entire door.
On the other hand, sectional doors having a plurality of panels which are not interconnected with each other, also exist. Such a sectional door is described for example in EP1234946, and is replicated in FIG. 1 and FIG. 2 of the present invention. FIG. 1 shows the sectional door in stacked state (door closed), also referred to as “closed state”. FIG. 2 shows two panels in the upright rails, and three panels in inclined storage guides (door is half open). The patent document JPH07310483 describes a very similar sectional door. In both cases, the door is opened or closed by an upward or downward movement of the bottom panel by means of winding or unwinding a steel cable attached to the bottom panel. As a result, the other panels, which rest on the bottom panel, are also moved upward or downward. During the upward movement the top panel is forced into storage rails, where the panels are stored next to each other and against each other. During the downward movement panels are lowered out of the storage rails, one by one. A disadvantage of these sectional doors is that the panels laterally rub against each other, which can cause scratches, and may sometimes even block the mechanism.